


The Needs of the Many

by icanseethroughtimesstuff



Series: Thasmin Week [4]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, F/F, Hopeful Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-15 03:11:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17520911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icanseethroughtimesstuff/pseuds/icanseethroughtimesstuff
Summary: Post 'Resolution', Yaz confronts the Doctor about something that's been bothering her.  She finds out just how far she is willing to go to stop the Daleks.





	The Needs of the Many

**Author's Note:**

> For Thasmin Week. 23/1 - Angst. This particular prompt isn't my strong suit but I did my best!

After defeating the Dalek, the Doctor announced she was dropping them at home for a week to recover.  Normally Yaz would have protested spending a week away from her girlfriend but not this time.  After all the whole situation had been pretty intense, especially for Ryan who had a lot of talking to do with his dad.

Yaz struggled with her thoughts about Aaron.  Not about forgiving him, that was Ryan’s choice and the gang would back him up no matter what.  No, something else was nagging at her, at the Doctor’s behaviour while he was possessed by the Dalek.  It seemed wrong, off somehow, like Yaz wasn’t sure just how far she’d been willing to go.

After a week at home, working mostly, Yaz hadn’t really had time to analyse her thoughts in much greater detail.  After all she couldn’t know the Doctor’s intentions without speaking to her so there was little point dwelling on it.  The Doctor had given Yaz a special phone she could use to call her wherever or whenever she needed to, but she had refrained, not wanting this to be a conversation they had over the phone.  She had however messaged Graham and Ryan, asking them to let her speak to the Doctor alone the next time she landed.  They’d both replied in the affirmative, Ryan with some rather suggestive emojis clearly completely misreading the situation.

Sitting in her room she heard the wheezing and groaning of the Tardis landing outside, exactly a week to the minute since she left.  Picking up her coat and heading out of the door Yaz made her way there with more nerves than she’d ever had before.  Normally the sound had her running with excitement towards the woman who had literally dropped into her life and changed it completely but this time there was nothing but anxiety.

Opening the doors she was greeted with the sight of the Doctor standing in front of the console facing the doors with a big smile on her face.  Unable to help herself, Yaz jogged over and pulled her into a brief kiss before burying her face in her shoulder.

“Well, hello to you to,” the Doctor murmured into Yaz’s hair, “I should go away more often.”

“Don’t you dare,” Yaz replied, burying herself even deeper into the other woman.  She allowed herself to enjoy the warmth and closeness before diving into the conversation they needed to have.  As if on cue, the Doctor pulled away from her and looked towards the door.

“I wonder what’s keeping the boys, they’re usually here by now.”

Yaz could feel her hands starting to shake, and tried to control the tremor in her voice.  “Actually, I asked them to give us some space, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

The Doctor turned towards her with a curious look on her face which transformed into a frown when she noticed the trembling hands of her girlfriend.  She quickly moved towards her, taking them in her own.  “Is something wrong, Yaz?”

Yaz looked up into the expressive hazel eyes so full of concern, and again had to fight to keep her voice level.  “I’m not sure.  Maybe.”

“Let’s go and sit down, okay?  I’ll make us some tea.”  Guiding Yaz to the kitchen, the Doctor started up the kettle, then dug two mugs out of the cupboard.  Yaz’s was a plain blue one while the Doctor’s bore the legend, ‘World’s Okayest Pilot’.  The domesticity of the moment was jarring, especially after what had happened the last time they’d been together.  Yaz tried desperately not to think about the triumph and manic glee in the Doctor’s voice after she’d opened the Tardis doors and taunted the Dalek over it’s imminent demise in the heart of a supernova.  Tried not to think how she didn’t seem to care that it was still firmly attached to Ryan’s dad at the time.

She hadn’t noticed the Doctor place the steaming mug down in front of her and didn’t snap out of her reverie until she felt a hand on top of hers.

“Come on,” the Doctor said, guiding Yaz out of the kitchen and towards the sitting room.  The room had been a new creation apparently, materialising after Graham made a comment about their being nowhere for them to relax after their various adventures.  There was a tv and a stereo, as well as two large sofas (purple of course).  Graham and Ryan usually sat together on the bigger one while the Doctor and Yaz would curl around each other on the smaller one.  This time however, Yaz seated herself on the larger one while the Doctor sat in their usual spot.  She looked at her a little sharply but otherwise didn’t comment.

“What’s on your mind?”  the Doctor asked, holding her mug in both hands and blowing on it gently.

Yaz stared at her mug, not wanting to make eye contact with the Doctor, knowing it would derail her completely.  “I’ve just been thinking about what happened last week.”

She could feel the Doctor’s eyes on her, boring into the side of her head.  “It was pretty intense and scary.  If you need more time away, I understand.”  There was an underlying sadness to her voice that Yaz hated, especially knowing that she could be about to make things worse.

“I know Ryan got to his dad in time, but if he hadn’t, if he couldn’t get to him…you had a plan to save him, right?”  She sipped her tea while waiting for a response, a response that didn’t seem to be coming.  After a minute of silence she couldn’t resist any longer and looked across at the Doctor.  She was no longer looking at her but staring at the wall.  There was hopelessness in the look in her eyes, but also bitterness and a hint of rage, buried away.

“Have I ever told you about Daleks before?” she asked.  Yaz shook her head then, remembering the Doctor wasn’t looking at her, responded, “No.”

“Horrible creatures.  They’re mutations of an older species, genetically modified to feel nothing but hate.  They view anything that isn’t Dalek as unworthy of life.  Impure.  They travel across the universe, killing and destroying everything in their path.  One Dalek has the power to depopulate and destroy an entire planet.”  The bitterness in her eyes had spread to her voice.  Yaz had never heard her speak about another living creature with such hatred and contempt.

“That sounds awful,” she said, “but what does that have to do with what I asked?”

The Doctor put her mug down and turned to face Yaz, something like desperation in her eyes now.  “If you could stop a creature like that, end it before it could wipe out an entire planet, would you think one human life would be worth the sacrifice?”  She sounded like she was almost pleading now, begging Yaz to understand.

“You didn’t have a plan, did you?” Yaz responded slowly.  “If none of us could get to him, you would have let him die.”

The Doctor pulled her hands into her lap and clenched them into fists.  She didn’t respond for a minute then finally, so quietly Yaz barely heard her, she said, “yes.”

Yaz’s mind reeled at that, unable to comprehend that the kind, compassionate woman she’d fallen for would sacrifice a life like that.  “No.  I don’t believe you, you always find another way, you always try to save everyone.”

“Not always,” the Doctor responded, a little louder now, “sometimes sacrifices are necessary the save whole worlds.”

Yaz couldn’t believe what she was hearing.  She looked at the Doctor as if she’d never seen her before.  The woman she’d seen give chances to the most horrible people and creatures, even the Dalek at first.  She remembered her almost begging the three of them for affirmation that she’d given it a chance, desperate to know that she was doing the right thing.  But then…

She thought back to Kerblam and Charlie.  Surely there had been a way to transport him away before the explosion?  He’d done terrible things, truly, but did he deserve to die?  And did the Doctor, despite all of her outward attempts to give people a chance, believe she had the right to decide who got to live and who had to die?

“Who gets to decide?” Yaz asked, desperately trying to keep her voice level.

“What?” the Doctor replied, looked genuinely confused.

“Do you?”  Yaz couldn’t keep the tremor from her voice.  “Is it up to you decide who gets to live and who gets sacrificed?  Who deserves to live, Doctor?”

The Doctor looked dumbfounded and heartbroken.  She could have been more shocked if Yaz had reached across and slapped her.  “It’s not about deserve,” she spoke clearly, desperately, needing Yaz to understand.  “Most of the time it’s circumstance, somebody in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I don’t pick someone at random and offer them up as a sacrifice.”  Her voice was getting louder now, almost defensive.  “If it were up to me no one would die, ever.  But sometimes it happens and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

“But you didn’t even try,” Yaz said, fighting to hold back tears now.  She realised they were both standing now, facing off with each other and for the life of her she couldn’t remember when it had happened.  “With Aaron I mean.  There must have been something you could have done but you didn’t even try.  What if Ryan hadn’t gotten there?”  Another horrible thought crossed her mind.  “Or what if he did but he wasn’t strong enough to pull him back.  What if he’d slipped or something and they’d both died?  Would his life have been worth it to kill one Dalek?”  She was shouting now.  She honestly had been trying to understand, but she was so angry.

The Doctor looked horrified, her mouth opening and closing like she couldn’t think what else to say.  Eventually she managed to reply.  “There are some things I can’t prevent.  I need you to understand this, Yaz.  The Daleks are the closest thing to real monsters in the universe, they…”

“I don’t care about the Daleks, I care about you!”  She almost screamed this, before taking a breath, trying to get her emotions under control.  She looked into the eyes of the woman she clearly didn’t know as well as she thought.  The anger she’d been keeping at bay was still there, closer now.  The Doctor had never lost her temper with Yaz.  Sure, they’d argued and bickered before about little things like any couple would, but there was never any real anger or malice behind it.

“What do you want me to say?” the Doctor asked, pleaded.

“I want to know how far you’d go.  How many lives would be worth it?”  Yaz wasn’t shouting any more, but she was breathing hard, desperately trying to regain control of herself.  “How many to stop one Dalek?  Ten?  Twenty?  A hundred?  A thousand?”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed, and she appeared to fold in on herself.  She almost resembled an animal preparing to defend itself from a physical attack.  “You’re not being fair.  I don’t do that, I don’t choose.  I never want to see another Dalek as long as I live but when I do, I have to stop them.  If I don’t, they will kill everyone, destroy everything.  I don’t throw people at them like sacrifices.  What would you have done?  If it had been you, would you have risked it surviving to save Ryan’s dad?”

“Yes!” Yaz shouted again, no hesitation in her voice.  “We could have imprisoned it, found a way to separate it from him.  It separated from Lin so we know it’s possible.  And then, if they really are as bad as you say, then we could have killed it.”

“There wasn’t time for that,” the Doctor ground out through her teeth.

“What if it had been me,” Yaz almost whispered.  She’d been wanting to ask this for a while now.  “What if I’d been the one it possessed?  Would you have done the same?  Or would you have made time to figure it out?”

The Doctor recoiled slightly, the oncoming anger subsiding in an instant to be replaced by shock and horror.

“Actually, don’t answer that,” Yaz said quickly as she saw the Doctor take in a breath to respond, “don’t think I’d like either answer.”

“I’d do anything to save you,” the Doctor replied anyway.

“And isn’t that just awful,” Yaz sighed, sad and defeated.  “I’m not worth more than Aaron.  Or any other person for that matter.  To you maybe,” she said as the Doctor geared up to speak again, “but not to the world.  Or to the universe.  If you would have done anything to save me, you should be willing to do that to save anyone.  We’re all as important as each other, we all deserve to be saved.”

She looked in the Doctor’s eyes.  There was a look there she couldn’t place.  It almost looked like sadness but it was much older and more profound than any simple human emotion.  Yaz understood fully for the first time just how alien she was, and how old.  They’d never discussed how long the Doctor had lived, but in that moment she looked more ancient than Yaz could comprehend.  There were a thousand lifetimes of suffering in those eyes.  But she could tell that the Doctor still didn’t completely understand, perhaps never could.

She’d never say she was better than humanity, or above them.  But Yaz knew there was a part of her that believed it, however small.  There was something inside her that would allow this person to die while saving that one, that truly believed she had the right to make that choice.  It was as if a veil she didn’t even know was there had been removed, and all she wanted to do was replace it and go back to the way things were.

But that was impossible now.

“I want you to leave.”  Yaz said.  She hadn’t been planning to say it, but now that she had she couldn’t bring herself to take it back.

“What?” the Doctor reeled back as if she had physically struck her.  Yaz wanted to reassure her but she honestly couldn’t bring herself to.

“You need to go.  You can’t stay if you can’t even understand how wrong what you did was.”  She looked away then, knowing she wouldn’t be able to hold her resolve if she looked at her any longer.  The Doctor looked so betrayed and hurt it felt like physical pain.  She picked up her jacket that she’d removed when she sat down and made her way past her towards the console room.

She could hear the Doctor hurrying along behind her, calling after her.  She didn’t slow as she made her way to the double doors of the exit.  They were closed as she approached but swung open when she reached them.

Before leaving, she turned to face the Doctor who was pleading with her to stay, tears starting to form in her eyes.  “Please don’t go, I love you, please don’t leave,” she was chanting over and over again.

“I love you too,” Yaz chocked out, “but I can’t stay if you honestly think one human life is worth sacrificing or is worth more than another.”

The tears were pouring down the Doctor’s face now, and Yaz could feel her own eyes stinging.  She allowed herself a moment of weakness and dragged her into a hug, burying herself in the Doctor’s shoulder.

The Doctor clung to her in desperation as if she would never let go, but when Yaz pulled away she released her.

“Can I ever come back?” the Doctor asked through her tears.  “I love you so much, I don’t want to leave.”

Yaz sighed and realised she couldn’t leave her with no hope.  They’d been through too much for that.

“Give it six months.  Go off on your own for a bit.  And promise me you’ll always try to save everyone, no matter who they are.”

“There’ll always be people I can’t save.”  The Doctor sounded so bitter and angry, Yaz knew she was making the right choice.

“I know.  But the important thing is that you always try.”  The Doctor shook her head and wiped away her tears.  The bitterness had been replaced with determination.

“I will.  I promise.”

“I’ll see you soon, yeah?  Then we’ll talk again.”

The Doctor nodded as Yaz stepped off the Tardis.  They didn’t say anything else and Yaz turned to wave goodbye.  The Doctor didn’t smile, but she did wave back.  Then with one last desperate look she closed the doors.  The Tardis started to dematerialise almost instantly, and Yaz felt a pang hearing the groaning, wheezing noise that she wouldn’t be hearing again for a while.

She stood there, gathering her thoughts, wondering if she’d made the right decision.  Both her and the Doctor needed some perspective on what happened, and they couldn’t find that as long as they were orbiting around each other constantly.  Yaz just had to hope they could both find it separately.

Sighing she headed towards Ryan and Graham’s flat.  This was going to be difficult to explain.

*****

Six months later and still not a day had gone by that Yaz hadn’t thought about the Doctor.  The boys had been shocked when she’d told them what happened, omitting some of the worst of it.  There were some things they didn’t need to know and others the Doctor had the right to explain herself.  They were a little confused but to their credit neither of them blamed Yaz or tried to make her feel guilty.  If anything, they were dealing with it better than Yaz was.  Graham was through the worst of his grief, and had taken up fishing as a hobby, which Ryan occasionally accompanied him on.

Ryan had finished his qualifications and was now a trained mechanic, which he loved.  He’d started bringing home bits of scrap metal and making small sculptures out of them in his spare time, telling Yaz it helped his coordination.

Yaz’s parents had asked a few questions about the Doctor’s whereabouts.  After she rather brusquely told them she wouldn’t be around for a while the subject was delicately allowed to drop.  Yaz had never told them that they’d been dating but she knew her mum at least had her suspicions.  She seemed even gentler with Yaz nowadays and rather than reassuring her it was driving her mad.  She started spending more and more time with Ryan and Graham when she wasn’t working, at least they didn’t treat her like she was made of glass.

She sighed as she stared out of her bedroom window.  She had been waiting all day for the familiar wheezing noise, and it was now getting towards evening.  The rational part of her brain was telling her that it had only just hit six months that day, that she might still be a day or two.  Her subconscious however was conjuring up all sorts of scenarios.  What if the Doctor had forgotten about her?  What if she didn’t want to come back?  What if something had happened and she couldn’t?

Yaz had spent the last six months with her emotions all over the place.  One minute she was angry at the Doctor for what she’d done, for not understanding, even irrationally for leaving even though Yaz had made her do it.  Then she’d drop into a deep depression, questioning if she was even right or if she was just being childish, demanding change from someone so much wiser and more experienced than her.

Mostly she just missed her.  For all her faults she knew the Doctor loved her, loved all three of them in her own way.  She’d allowed them to travel with her and shown them amazing things, never asking for anything in return except the pleasure of their company.  With the benefit of hindsight, she realised she could have handled the whole situation better, been less confrontational and accusatory.

She still believed she was right to question, but the Doctor’s explanations seemed to make more sense now.  After she’d calmed down she understood that it was never her intention to put people in danger or to sacrifice anyone, had seen evidence with her own eyes of her attempts to save people.  She just needed to understand that everyone deserved the chance to be saved, not just a select few.

She was about to give up and start getting ready for bed when she heard it.  She thought she’d imagined it at first, but it started getting louder.  She had no idea how much she’d missed that awful wheezing noise until that moment.  She grabbed her jacket and sprinted out of her flat, past her surprised mum who called something after her that she didn’t even register.

Before Yaz knew it she’d arrived at the familiar blue box.  Despite herself and the conversation she knew still needed to happen, she couldn’t help but feel excited to see it again, so different from the anxiety she’d felt the last time.  Taking that as a good sign, she stepped up to the doors and pushed them open.

The Doctor was waiting for her in front of the control panel exactly like last time.  She was thinner, Yaz noticed, her coat hanging slightly looser on her frame, and there were dark circles around her eyes.  But she couldn’t hide the joy that lit up her face when she was Yaz again.  She held out her arms to her and Yaz couldn’t have stopped herself if she tried.  She practically flew into them, burying herself in her Doctor, breathing her in like she’d been drowning and her head had broken into the air.

“I missed you so much,” the Doctor breathed into her hair.

“Me too,” Yaz replied, barely audible from her position buried into the Doctor’s shoulder.  She heard the door close behind her and felt the welcoming hum of the Tardis in her head.  It seemed the Doctor wasn’t the only one who missed her.

She knew they still needed to talk, probably a lot before the air was completely cleared.  But for now she was content just hold and be held.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are always appereciated x


End file.
